Managing People at TNNS Company - Case Study Example

Managing people s Introduction This assignment has been written in report structure and it has began by answering the questions to the TNNS Company case study, then literature review, human resource or manpower, talent management, relation of TNNS case study to human resource strategies, manpower and talent management. Thereafter recommendations and a conclusion are given before the references at the end. How would a TM strategy help this company? The TM strategy would have helped TNNS Company on business development advisory as well as strategy development. For instance, the strategy will educate the company personnel on the importance of proper equipping of the company in terms of people to execute merger and acquisition strategy. In addition, the strategy will educate the company personnel that People who are skilled corporate development functions are either understaffed during active periods or overstaffed during inactive cycles (Maier et al. 2013). Either way, the company can lose because the corporate development function is not responding to the demands of the business, or it consumes resources and funds that might be better used elsewhere. Further, the company will get to know that investing in process and tools can yield little return when corporate development is not a core function of the company (Maier et al. 2013). What perspective or approach to talent would be appropriate? According to the implications of talent management, TNNS Company is strategic and deliberate in how it sources, attracts, selects, trains, develops, retains, promotes, and moves its employees through the company. The company failed to choose the best talented people in various departments. For example, the first manager could identify where the project should be but could not identify the current state of the project (Reilly 2003). TNNS should research more on the value of talent management to uncover benefits in some areas of the company like revenue, customer satisfaction, productivity, quality, cycle time, cost and market capitalization among others (Maier et al. 2013). Hiring the most talented personnel will lead to hiring the most qualified valuable employees and a strong emphasis is impacted on retention. What policies and practices for talent development are needed now? For now, TNNS should offer refreshment courses to its current employees to enable them complete the current project because some of them like the two project managers defended themselves by arguing out that the company management did not prepare them sufficiently for their roles (Lewis 2000). In addition, the company needs to train its workers on the importance of teamwork because unless they work as a team, they will never complete the project. What policies and practices for talent development are needed in the future? In future, TNNS will need to employ talented and qualified personnel in various areas within the company. Employing talented employees will automatically cut down the expenses of the company (Reilly 2003). Executing a talent management system within the company will optimise the performance of every employee and the company as a whole. Selecting will offer return on investment as well. Literature Review Managing people is the most important and most difficult job for managers. Managers are expected to lead, motivate, inspire and encourage his employees. Sometimes the manager is forced to hire, fire, discipline and evaluate employees (Manfred & Kets de Vries 2003). The below guidelines are useful in guiding a manager through the process of goal setting and managing employee although it is not a complete set of day to day instructions (Manfred & Kets de Vries 2003). 1. A manager should figure out what is going to change about his role now that he is a manager. Managers are not, primarily, individual contributors. This means that he is going to be responsible for the work of others. His success depends on how well his team performs. 2. The manager should prepare for the transition. This will become confusing and frustrating, perhaps not immediately, but managers are often pulled in multiple directions. He may have a different dress code to follow. He will have to obey new rules from HR like; finding a mentor, joining a network group, contacting HR, helping his staff cope, not neglecting his family and, not neglecting his health. 3. He should identify his goals. What specifically are his measured goals? Does he have hourly, daily or weekly targets his team must meet? What about his new goals such as reviewing productivity? He should write down everything and post it prominently. 4. He should know his team. He needs to know individual strengths and weaknesses for each team member. For instance, he should note that Paul works extremely fast but occasionally misses some of the details. Mary is incredibly thorough but has issues with the volume of work processed. He really needs to know all this because he will use the knowledge to balance the productivity of his team. 5. He should match tasks with staff. He should use the information gleaned from the above steps to match people with work. This is skill-based work assignment. This is an effort to play into each person’s strengths and minimise work assignments that would target his or her weaknesses. 6. He should meet with his team members. Regular one-on-one meetings are critical to good management. These meetings have several purposes like giving feedback on job performance, outlining the goals for next meeting, learning about staff issues, asking employees for ideas and, motivating employees among others. 7. He should be visible: he must not isolate himself from the team. Sometimes the initial workload will seem overwhelming and might have a tendency to sequester himself away from the staff to keep up. The staff must feel the presence of the manager always. 8. Document team activities. The manager’s personal performance review will focus largely on his team’s performance so he must ensure he keeps a written record of issues and accomplishments. This will be especially important if there are significant issues that arise. 9. Reward performance. Although money is good, it is not a primary motivator for on-the-job performance. Recognition is much more effective. If the manager has authority, he can grant performance leave. He should make the rewards regular and attainable but difficult. 10. Learn coaching. There will inevitably be times when the manager will need to correct behavior. He should learn to do this properly. If done correctly, he will get the results he wants. If he does it poorly, things can go horribly wrong. Human Resource Human resource is a set of people making up the workforce of a company or organisation. For example in TNNS Company, the human resources are the two project managers, company managers and the engineers among other junior workers within the company (Bulla & Scott 1994). The professional discipline and business function of overseeing an organisation’s human resources if called human resource management. Manpower is the same as Human Resource. Talent management Talent management is described as the commitment of an organization to recruit, retain and develop the most talented and superior workers available in the job market (Reilly 2003). Talent management comprises all the work processes and systems related to the retaining and developing a superior workforce. The strategy of talent management needs to be fully integrated within all the employee related processes of any organisation (Bulla & Scott 1994). Although retaining talented employees in the talent management system is the job of every member within the organization, the managers play key roles in the process. Relating the Case Study of TNNS to Human Resource Strategy, Manpower and Talent Management TNNS Company has a poor human strategy because it employs only two managers who between them oversee several projects at a time. The company lacks enough human resource because some departments like finance and marketing should not be handled by the project manager but specialists in the areas. The company does not train its workers adequately and this is the reason why the two project managers defended themselves arguing that the company management had not prepared them properly for the roles allocated to them (Lewis 2000). The company must have assumed the importance of holding regular meetings with employees as recommended in the human resource strategy to listen to their problems and get their views about the progress of the company. For instance, after the company management taking a closer look after things going sour, they realized that there were tensions between the system engineers, mechanical design and service engineers. These tensions were supposed to be realised earlier in regular meetings and solved before the company went to that extent. Concerning talent management, TNNS failed to manage its workers. First, the family manager thought project based working with good project managers was the only way the company would progress well (Lewis 2000). They did not consider the aspect of expertise; maybe they considered the goodness of project managers from a moral character perspective. Second, for them, distinctive engineering added a distinctive feature to the progress of the company and they feared losing them because engineers were hard to find. The family project managers might have just employed engineers by the name instead of recruiting talented and qualified engineers and other workforce. Recommendations TNNS should implement Human Resource training and development in a way that it should oil the human resources machinery making it something that takes the company forward. If Human Resource training and development is not professional or appropriate, the result is a bureaucratic setup that is a hindrance to everyone in the company (Elwood et al. 1996). The company should ensure its HR facilitates its growth, for all of which Human Resource training and development is the foundation. Human Resource training and development will ensure the company imparts necessary knowledge and skills to every human resource professional. In addition, TNNS will need to continuously upgrade its human resource skills and attitudes through regular meetings. Training them to bring them on par with the companys goals and in tune with the industry trends is necessary, since well-equipped HR professionals are the means to ensuring optimal performance from the company’s employees (Kotter & Dan 2002). Concerning recruitment techniques, TNNS should select employees who will become valuable resources to the company. It should not just employ engineers because they are hard to find. Its training and development must be focused on the right techniques for recruitment (Elwood et al. 1996). The technique should not just be posting requirements on jobsites and bringing the candidate to the interview panel. Each interview has to be meaningful and effective. This session is helpful in choosing the right employees who are going to become part of the company. For this to be meaningful, Human Resource training and development should be such that even a junior HR professional in the company is able to make the right choice. Human Resource training and development should be focused on training the HR professional to understand requirements threadbare from the company perspective. Policies and regulations should be enforced. For this too, the HR of TNNS has to be thoroughly trained (Gomez-Mejia et al. 2008). Human Resource training and development should be of such quality and relevance that no regulation should be out of place with the employees. TNNS will have to ensure its HR stay tuned to the company. When a policy is unpopular, it is HR which gets rapped. Human Resource training and development should be such that these rules are not only in line with the company’s ethics and image, they should be popular with employees, as well (Gomez-Mejia et al. 2008). In fact, Human Resource training and development should be of such standard that it should be able to identify any discrepancy and be able to come up with suggestions to managements at the time of formulation itself. All this would become possible only with sound Human Resource training and development. Conclusion Managing people in a company is difficult but again easy if the company management does the right thing from the start. Every human resource within an organisation including TNNS has a role to play in ensuring proper management of employees for the success of the company but the manager plays the key role in ensuring the process is a success. As discussed above, strategies like human resource and talent management are vital in proper management of people and organizations at large. References Bulla, DN & Scott, PM 1994, Manpower requirements forecasting: a case example, in Human Resource Forecasting and Modelling, Human Resource Planning Society, New York. Elwood F, Holton II, JW, Trott, Jr. 1996, Trends Toward a Closer Integration of Vocational Education and Human Resources Development, Journal of Vocational and Technical Education, vol. 12, no. 2, p.7. Gomez-Mejia, LR, Balkin, DB & Robert LC 2008, Management: People, Performance, Change, 3rd ed.,New York USA McGraw-Hill, p. 19. Kotter, PJ & Dan SC 2002, The Heart of Change, Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston. Lewis JP 2000, The Project Manager’s Desk: A comprehensive Guide to project planning, scheduling, evaluation system, Mc-Graw Hill, New York. Maier, C, Laumer, S, Eckhardt, A & Weitzel, T2013, Analyzing the impact of HRIS implementations on HR personnel’s job satisfaction and turnover intention, The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, vol.22 no.3, pp. 193–207. Manfred FR & Kets de Vries 2003, The Dark Side of Leadership, Business Strategy Review vol.14 no. 3, p.26. Reilly, P 2003, Guide to Workforce Planning in Local Authorities, Employers Organization for Local Government, London. Read More